A tale of two elections

By
Mike Treen
-
25
11

The first country I want to discuss had a presidential election in 2016. The person declared the winner lost by nearly three million votes.

Just over half the eligible voters voted and the winner got less than half those voted – around 25% of all eligible voters.

The truth is that this is the second election in the last few decades when the losing candidate was declared the winner. It happened in 2000.

No government or world leader criticised those elections. No one said it was undemocratic, though, clearly it was.

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This country is called the United States of America. It’s President is Donald Trump.

He was chosen by an Electoral College made of representatives of States equivalent to the 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 Senators plus three from the District of Colombia. 538 in total. The election chooses those representatives, but the numbers are weighted towards smaller, less populous states.

Most people in this country want their president elected by popular vote but they are not allowed.

In the second country, the election attracted just under half the eligible voters, similar to the United States. The winner got 68% of the vote against 6 other candidates. He was supported by over 30% of eligible voters compared to just 25% for the winning candidate in the United States.

The United States had encouraged opponents of the winning candidate to boycott the election to undermine its legitimacy. However, a major opposition figure did run and got 20% of the vote. He would have got more if the boycott had not happened. But voters had a clear choice and millions voted for the winning candidate.

The winning candidate in the second country is Nicholas Maduro, the elected President of Venezuela. His election has been hypocritically criticised by the US President and his allies around the world. Unfortunately, this includes New Zealand.

His country has been attacked and subject to sanctions. They are trying to “make the economy scream” to use the words of Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of State in the United States just prior to the military coup in Chile in 1973 shortly after another socialist was elected there.

This coup was followed by decades of coups, military regimes, and death squads being given free rein in country after country at the behest of the US government. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed to make Latin America “safe” for US companies to exploit at their pleasure. Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Bolivia, El Salvador, Colombia, Honduras and Nicaragua had crimes against humanity inflicted on them.

One of the architects of that policy under former US President Reagan and Bush, Elliot Abrams, has been appointed to by Trump to run the campaign against Venezuela today. Abrams is a right-wing hawk who was convicted in 1991 for lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal, but he was later pardoned. Abrams defended Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt as he oversaw a campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people in Guatemala in the 1980s. Ríos Montt was later convicted of genocide. Abrams was also linked to the 2002 coup in Venezuela that attempted to topple Hugo Chávez. He has the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. It is a sick joke to say this man is concerned about democracy.

We cannot allow the US empire to achieve their coup plans in Venezuela. We must oppose all foreign military intervention. We must demand an end to all sanctions.

We cannot allow the US empire to create another graveyard of popular hopes for freedom and independence in Venezuela today.

25 COMMENTS

  3. What should we at the grassroots do to show their support for countries such as Venezuela Mike? (I say countries because America and it’s allies continue these disgusting, hypocritical, psychopathic interventions globally, intent on making money or testing weapons or spreading disease and blackface). I have donated to reputable news sources in the first instance deciding the public needs to be aware and accurately informed of global politics, warts and all (sadly the main stream media does not fulfil the role of true journalism anymore). Is there something more direct the average citizen could do?

  4. So, yes, the US should be keeping out of other countries governance. They certainly don’t like other countries even having a hint of influence in theirs after all.

    The crisis in Venezuela and its lessons for the left

    “A gang of thieves”

    At the crux of Venezuela’s crisis is the currency control system, which began under Hugo Chavez as a way to restrict access to foreign exchange and ensure enough dollars to import priority goods.

    Like previous attempts at fixed exchange rates, there was some corruption and abuse of this system. But it wasn’t until Maduro came to power in 2013 that things really started falling apart.

    “A gang was created that was only interested in getting their hands on the oil revenue,” says Hector Navarro, former Chavista minister and socialist party leader.

    “They are thieves with no ideology,” he added.

    Chavez’s former finance minister, Jorge Giordani, has said the same thing, estimating that some $300 billion have been embezzled in this way. Navarro and Giordani were long time members of Chavez’s inner circle and mainstays of his cabinet until they became critical of Maduro in 2014 and were sacked.

    But we should also be looking at the people in power in those countries and what they’re doing that enriches themselves while doing untold damage to their country.

  5. So those mass murdering warmongering scumbags are at it again, attempting to install a puppet leader in a sovereign country with the sole intention of raping and pillaging that nations resources. If these lying assholes really gave a fuck about oppressed peoples they would have spent the last decades invading country’s like Zimbabwe, Israel for perching on Palestinian land, saudi arabia, all the other South American country’s where they have supported murderous dictators and war lords ad infinitum. What really worries me, is not so much the diatribes from pomposity, burton etc. i expect that from the gang, but the way a large part of the world has been only to eager to line up, bend over and wait to please the master. Maybe they think they could be next in line if dissenting? I must say i have been quite impressed with Peters statements that the problems are Venezuela’s to decide, but unfortunately i can not see that lasting, and that nu zild will soon shuffle in to line and bend over. Please if one more person mentions democracy i will throw up.

  8. Alfred de Zayas who is a former secretary of the UNHRC says in his special report on Venezuela that economic sanctions are the modern and far more potent equivalent of the ancient laying siege to a city. More potent becausethey attempt and often succeed in bringing a whole nation to its knees. So just as with a siege people starve and die through lack of essential supplies. Many people attempt to leave. Its a bit lame then to heap the blame on Maduro who as Mike says won a free and largely fair election. It was monitored and given the green light. Funny that Venezuela has the greatest reserves of oil of any nation. Through what power does the USA get to claim it as theirs. Only through the power of their military as it has always been. No amount of spin will change the fact that it all boils down to we want to exploit you and your resources.

    https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/former-un-rapporteur-us-sanctions-against-venezuela-causing-economic-and-humanitarian-crisis-900603.html

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html

    https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/successful-un-mission-to-venezuela/

    • Through what power does the USA get to claim it as theirs. Only through the power of their military as it has always been. No amount of spin will change the fact that it all boils down to we want to exploit you and your resources.

      That has always been the way of empires and when other nations start to realise that the empire isn’t as powerful as it says, that its military can’t really project power the way that they believed then that empire starts to collapse.

      And when that happens the empire gets surly and dangerous as the rest of the world starts to ignore it.

  9. ELLIOTT ABRAMS, TRUMP’S PICK TO BRING “DEMOCRACY” TO VENEZUELA, HAS SPENT HIS LIFE CRUSHING DEMOCRACY

    The choice of Abrams sends a clear message to Venezuela and the world: The Trump administration intends to brutalize Venezuela, while producing a stream of unctuous rhetoric about America’s love for democracy and human rights. Combining these two factors — the brutality and the unctuousness — is Abrams’s core competency.

    The US rulers hate democracy. Always have done. In fact, their ‘democracy’ was actually designed by the ‘Founding Fathers’ to prevent it. They actually wanted to make the US an aristocracy but realised that the armed peasants that had just won the revolution weren’t going to stand for that sort of BS and so they designed a democracy that would leave rich people in power, that could ignore the will of the people.

    I suspect that they want the same thing for Venezuela and the rest of the world.

  10. Comparing apples with pears it seems, Mike Treen clings to the Bolivarian Revolution, but fails to realise that Maduro was a poor choice as leader, and lacks skill, integrity and charisma.

    Add wide spread corruption, incompetence, and endless failures to transform the Venezuelan economy by diversification and collective enterprise in a pragmatic and effective manner, the result is damning.

    Only idiots defend Maduro, the best solution is what Mexico’s president and the Uruguayan leader/s have proposed.

    But it is too late now, the momentum has turned against the regime in Caracas, Maduro has lost all credibility and will have to go into exile soon.

    Hugo Chavez will turn in his grave, I hear him rumble.

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